Pages

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Roma -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

We all know stories of Gypsies -- Roma -- wandering peoples who are strange and seemingly dangerous. But, what if a religious revival is happening among them? What if Pentecostalism especially is taking root among a people usually left on the margins, and transforming their lives -- enhancing education and family life. Martin Marty, having spotted an article by Philiip Jenkins in the Christian Century takes a look at what's happening amongst this people.

Sightings usually sights religious news and trends with a metaphorical “naked eye.” No one needs a telescope or a microscope to spot most of our topics. Snappy headlines, prime time signals, and messages gone-viral call attention to them. This week, for a change, we’ll focus on an almost-always-overlooked population and its people of faith: the Romani.

I picked up on the Romani this week thanks to an almost back-paged story in the Christian Century (June 11, 2014) by Philip Jenkins. He, more dependably than anyone else, keeps up, and keeps us up, on world Christian trends. Trusting him, I read on to see what followed his small headline, “The Church of the Roma.” Who cares? Who should care?

What caught my eye was Jenkins' final paragraph on the Roma (a.k.a. “Gypsies”): “For centuries, mainstream Europeans hated and feared Gypsies because they were not considered true Christians. It would be ironic if the flourishing Roma churches stand out as devout Christian bastions in a secularized Europe.” It would also be ironic if chroniclers looking for signs of religious life in such a Europe overlooked them.

A near-overlooker, I do keep one eye on Pentecostal surges here and there. Jenkins and others foresee a Brazil in which Pentecostals may soon outnumber the other faiths; they have already broken the monopoly of Roman Catholicism in that once-mostly-Catholic Latin American nation. One cannot miss the Jenkins-noticed growth toward dominance by Pentecostalism in sub-Saharan Africa. Also, thanks to scholars and missioners at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, I get regular reports on Pentecostalism and its growth.

Hoosier Lutheran—yes, Lutheran!—contacts keep me up to date on missionary efforts from the American heartland to the world of the Romani. I’m aware of some small, conservative American-Lutheran bodies that carry on evangelization and support work in the camps of the Gypsies. They all know that such work is not popular, mainly because Romani people are not popular.

When, long ago, “the Gypsies” came every few years to camp along the river in my little Nebraska town, we were told to watch our wallets and lock our doors. These years the scary stories of abused wives and daughters, noticeable enough on their own, but inescapable to anyone who reads anti-immigrant blogs, are familiar enough.

And now? Jenkins tracks the Pentecostal and evangelical growth in Roma communities within Spain and France, but the Romani are most visible in Romania and Bulgaria. “Spain alone has a thousand Roma churches and perhaps 40 percent of French Roma are evangelical or charismatic. The Roma population of Romania’s Orthodox churches is steadily bleeding away to Pentecostalism.”

The new-Roma church style differs from the old, as it relates to more familiar forms of Christianity, masters organization techniques, promotes education, and has begun work to emancipate women. In many places, church leaders “have helped wean Roma people from involvement in crime and substance abuse.”

Back to irony: Pope Benedict XVI announced efforts to counter secularization in Europe, but we hear almost nothing about successes. The heirs of established-church Anglicanism and Lutheranism report little. This is not the day to define, analyze, defend, or critique these Pentecostal/evangelical successes.

But biblically informed observers observe that there is something biblically-nuanced about movements which, though obscure and once-powerless, are now changing the Christian Church in European and other parts, while the big and powerful churches rarely prosper. Yes, how ironic.

Resources:

Jenkins, Philip. “The church of the Roma.” The Christian Century 131:12 (June 11, 2014): 45.

Author, Martin E. Marty, is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

Editor, Myriam Renaud, is a Ph.D. Candidate in Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She was a 2012-13 Junior Fellow in the Marty Center.

No comments:

About Me

I am a Disciples of Christ pastor, theologian, community activist, historian, teacher. I'm a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary with a M.Div. and a Ph.D. in Historical Theology. I'm the author of a number of books including Marriage in Interesting Times (Energion, 2016) and Freedom in Covenant (Wipf and Stock, 2015).